


Nothing Gold Can Stay

by openmouthwideeye



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Gen, Implied Jaime/Cersei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A knight learns the worth of gold.</p>
<p> <i>Written as a Halloween challenge based on the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Gold Can Stay

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, J/B fandom! Many thanks to Isy for being a wonderful beta. And a huge round of applause for Rellie and IdesofApril/H3L for cooking this up in their shipper witch's brew. 
> 
> Nature's first green is gold,  
> Her hardest hue to hold.  
> Her early leaf's a flower;  
> But only so an hour.  
> Then leaf subsides to leaf,  
> So Eden sank to grief,  
> So dawn goes down to day  
> Nothing gold can stay.
> 
> \--Robert Frost

There once was a mad king who kept a beautiful woman captive in his hall. The woman was as fierce as a lioness, her lover a lion as gilded and lovely as she. About his shoulders rested a cloak of white, and at his hip he sheathed a golden blade—the only mistress he had ever known. When he drew his mistress and demanded the woman’s hand, he met only scorn.

“Vanquish my enemies if you wish to wed her,” the mad king declared.

The king saw opposition in every corner, and so the knight turned to the shadows, seeking foes amidst the flames.

“You are a golden fool,” said the king. “Tonight you shall sleep a bed of straw, and by morning your blade will cease to shine. Then you may prove your mettle.”

The knight stood tall and proud, but the lioness entreated him from her place beside the king. At her appeal he sheathed his sword and let the king’s guards sequester him in a white tower far from the main keep, where the air grew heavy and stale.

For endless hours he paced the cell, practicing his forms and dreaming of his lover. The torch flames flickered with each parry, guttered upon his thrusts, flared like a beast to devour him whenever his thoughts strayed to impenetrable eyes of jade and skin as smooth as sunlight.

When the moon was full in the sky, the handsome man went to the narrow window to track the night’s progress. The stars were scattered—morning dewdrops nestling the light of dawn amongst jealous stalks of grass—but the pale face of the moon shone bright. The knight saw that the dirty straw strewn about the cell had corroded his blade, and he grew desperately angry.

“My sword guts adversaries like a lion savages prey.” His curses were for the king, enjoying the pleasures of the knight’s soul-twin in quarters distant and unreachable. “You would tarnish my blade with madness and gloom, but it will rot in your belly before I fail this trial.”

An unfamiliar silhouette blocked the illumination of midnight, and the knight slashed at the imposing figure as instinct melted into motion. He put speed and skill into the blow, yet it glanced from the colossus’s shield as a dirk from a bulwark.

The knight tilted his head as the figure moved, resolving into a woman impossibly tall and uglier than she was immense.

“I have heard tell of a hulking woman outfitted as a man.” His smile was white and warm and withering. “‘The Maid,’ the smallfolk cheer and jeer in turn, but their betters speak less kindly.”

“You would surrender your cloak and exhaust your blade,” came the reply. “All for the softness of a woman’s skin.”

He cursed her and kicked at the straw, cursing again when it blustered along the length of his blade, leeching it of color more quickly than the fetid air.

“You are no more than a hay-wain, wench. What business have you here?” He sheathed his blade, though he knew it would not save the gold-plated edge. “I have no need of you. I am my own champion.”

Moonlight skittered across her face, deepening freckles into dappled blights and compounding her eyes into never-ending facets.

_The stories told no tale of unfathomable sapphires for eyes_ , thought the knight through his derision.

“Your sword dies before your eyes.”

“Revive it then, if you would save me.”

“You would give all for nothing.” Her grip tightened on a heavy shape at her waist, a blue-tinted blade he had not noticed. “Name me your champion, and I will win your freedom.”

But the arrogant knight would not accept her, and the wench sighed regretfully.

“To satiate your lust, you must sacrifice your luster,” she warned, but the knight would heed no counsel that kept him from his fierce autumn love. “The hem of your cloak,” she demanded, and he swept the shimmering folds of white across his arm, presenting her with the cloak he had been gifted upon his knighting.

The Maid touched the hem. He grew uneasy as it mottled beneath her fingertips, tracing ash and decay through the pristine threads until it laid grey and brown upon his shoulders. But when he pulled his sword from its sheath, it shone with all the splendor his cloak now lacked.

“Fight tomorrow,” she whispered angrily. “You will not lose.”

He did not. The morning rose as golden as his lover, and her smile shone pristine and white as her knight defeated the king’s first foe, a famed warrior the knight himself had once admired.

“The crimson of his blood for the blush of hers,” he said, curling his lip as red stained his sullied cloak.

“The risk was not equal to the reward,” the mad king rejoined. The golden knight drank in his lover’s beauty, but the king had no thought beyond quenching the bloody blade. “Sleep the cell a second night, and tomorrow your courage will waver and flee.”

The ember-edged lioness raised her chin, tracing the blade of her finger on the sharp edged throne.

And so the knight paced his cell another night, slashing and hacking the cloying air while his blade grew hopelessly dull.

“Wench,” he called, and she was there, stepping from the shadows with a frown.

“That is not my name,” she said, standing a little more tensely.

The knight waved her off. “I cannot win a golden bride without a golden blade. Return its sheen, and all my riches will be yours.”

“I have no care for worldly wealth,” she spoke lowly, still frowning. “No false yellow can restore your blade’s mettle.”

“Take what you need,” he said forcibly, pressing the flat of his sword into her broad palm. “I cannot live without her.”

And so the woman reached up, tracing his cheek with a rough hand that felt like a lover’s caress. The knight flinched away. Her hand fisted lightly in his hair and he eased into the touch as she smoothed imaginary aches.

When the knight opened his eyes, his blade shone with its own light. The skin of his face felt gaunt under his fingers; his locks had lost their luster.

“You will not lose,” she said again sadly.

And he did not. The morning dewed like rose-dust clinging to his fingers, and the knight faced his second opponent. The man’s hands danced with a cruel, green flame, but the knight drew the beauty from his lover’s pools of seawater, and with such nourishment he extinguished the flame of life upon his golden blade.

Again he demanded his lover’s return, and again the mad king denied him.

“Your marriage bed is interred within the tower cell. You will not rest your head upon your lady’s bosom unless you overcome a final foe.”

The wench awaited him in his cell, as the knight knew she would.

“Seek her no more,” she insisted, watching his blade lose sheen with each shallow strike. “I will win your life, and you can seek love far from this bloodless place.”

“Her blood flows through me. It is the only life.”

But when he proffered his blade the wench shook her head. “You have sacrificed both honor and glory. There is nothing you can give me.”

_No false yellow can restore your blade’s mettle._ The knight remembered her words, and a kind of madness took him. He clutched his hilt reflexively; it sunk into his palm like a lover. His mistress knew he would embrace her no more.

“I would give my hand to win hers.”

“No.” The wench hissed, striking his face with fierce twilit eyes.

He would not listen.

“My sword is yours.” He pressed the hilt into her hand, the blade digging grooves in his palm until its fullers ran red and hot. Her eyes shimmered wetly as she looked on, stone-faced as he turned his love upon itself.

When his fingers grew numb and his mangled palm began to spasm, the knight looked up at the lady from where he’d fallen amidst the rushes. She could not ignore the supplication in his gaze, and so she knelt before him, allowing him to rest upon her shoulder as she cleaned the wound and crudely bound his flayed flesh.

His sword shone like beaten gold on the dirty straw.

“I – am – ” he whispered into the pale skin of her neck. “ – Ser Jaime – Lannister.” His voice caught as he bolstered his strength, but when he pushed himself to stand he was steady. “No force the mad king musters will overcome me.”

“Jaime,” the wench murmured as the guards unlocked his cell. She was gone when they appeared, but her voice lingered, half a promise and half a prayer.

The third day’s sun was wan and weak. The knight’s golden lover was resplendent in a gown of crimson velvet, laden and lush as though she had coaxed every vivacity from the morning’s breath and set it upon her cheek.

“The night has not taken me, nor any knight,” declared her haggard lover, bewitched by the lady’s ardor as he sought his final foe.

“Then take her hand in yours,” declared the king, a hint of cruelty playing at his lips.

His lover descended the smooth stone dais, but when she came near the knight she recoiled.

“Your hair has lost its luster, your face become white and wan. Filth stains your back, and you would seek _my_ bed?”

“My blade is gold and true.” He caught up her wrist in his sword hand, watching her face turn as his deadened fingers scrabbled and caught her sleeve. But when he laid the blade before her, his lover’s eyes caught a pensive light.

“Lay your blade at the old king’s feet,” she commanded. “Then I will no longer be his, but yours alone.”

The knight could not act before the lioness snarled at some unseen adversary. The disheveled man turned, knowing whom he would find.

“Wench,” he greeted, smile bitter and sweet. “My final trial is won. All for naught, if not for you.”

“Yet you keep no faith with those who aid you?” Her eyes turned to ice, veiled where before they were clearer than a summer stream. “You cannot barter what is not yours. Fight me if you wish that blade to twine into the mad king’s throne.”

The lioness implored him and so the knight fought gallantly, but his arms were wasted and his hand would not grip. His sword shed sparks at each desperate clash; the impact smoldered his strength to ash. The mad king cackled and the knight’s golden lover scoffed at his fate.

The wench’s hoarfrost eyes melted to unshed tears as she staggered with him about the throne room. “I will forgive this debt.” Her mouth brimmed with frustration and her eyes swelled like the sea. “But you must invoke my name.”

“Maid.” His answer scraped from his throat as his golden blade rasped upon her blue.

She shook her head, evading him. “So the smallfolk call me.”

“Beauty,” his lover sneered.

The tall woman flinched. The knight would not have noticed were he not so close.

“Cruelty and iron tongues.” The barest whisper of a breath.

“Knight of Blue.” The king’s voice brooked no argument, but the woman frowned denial all the same.

“I am no knight,” she said. “Only a wayfarer.”

Jaime did not know her name. Had never asked, nor cared to know.

Until now.

He drew back, laying his blade upon her worn boots.

“Tell me your name,” he said softly.

The freckled woman smiled, wide and toothy and much fuller than his entreaty merited. She scooped up the weapon, pressed her blue-lacquered blade into his left hand. He watched as gold slag dripped to puddles on the stone, leaving the sword he had worn all his life gleaming like freshly smithed steel.

“Brienne.”

And he smiled, white and golden and much fuller than her response merited. Blue enamel ran rivulets down the sword, swirling into a tapestry of color with the gold on the ground.

“Brienne,” Ser Jaime repeated, savoring the crests and lulls of it as he savored an unexpected and challenging fight. “Wench. My sword is yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please take a few moments and leave a comment. Even if you're telling me this is the most pretentious fic you've ever read (because it very well may be the most purple prose I've written in a good long while. Damn, fairy tales are hard).


End file.
